Abstract

Abstract. This is very much an account of work in progress. We sketch the construction of an Atiyah dual (in the category of T-spaces) for the free loopspace of a manifold; the main technical tool is a kind of Tits building for loop groups, discussed in detail in an appendix. Together with a new localization theorem for T-equivariant K-theory, this yields a construction of the elliptic genus in the string topology framework of Chas-Sullivan, Cohen-Jones, Dwyer, Klein, and others. We also show how the Tits building can be used to construct the dualizing spectrum of the loop group. Using a tentative notion of equivariant K-theory for loop groups, we relate the equivariant K-theory of the dualizing spectrum to recent work of Freed, Hopkins and Teleman.

Citations